Love
by KitCat Italica
Summary: It was the greatest joke in the world to him, until Batsy started playing tricks on his beliefs. B/J slash


Love

He has heard of this thing called "love." So many people believe to have found it, to believe in it, receive it, give it, dwell their whole lives in its delusion. Just another façade, says he. Just another mask to hide behind as they justify their rapes, their families, their existences on Earth. It makes him laugh, really. Sure, he can use to his advantage the fact that people _believe_ that another person is more important to them than themselves, but that it is actually _true_…no. Of course not. Because human beings are just selfish, squabbling monkeys, pure animals that pretend to possess a greater sense of morality than the rest of the world. All their pathetic lives they believe in this shit.

That's what he's here for. He's here to show them the truth. To rub their pretty faces in the grit of their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities, that grinds away all pretenses of _honor_ and _love_. Then they'll see he's not so crazy after all. No more so than them, anyways. Their silly make-believe fantasy of _love_ is the true insanity.

Once he came across an old married couple. Kids moved out, grown up, far away. Just the two of them, mid-sixties, frail and weak already. He had them tied up in their own bedroom, the intestines of their dog smattered on his heels. He asked them why they had kept the animal for so long (12 years!), and they boldly claimed because they loved him. After he had calmed down from his giggling hysteria that followed, he asked the lady why she stayed with her husband to this day. She defiantly looked him in the eye – this one was a fighter, he could tell, which would make the fall all the juicier – and proudly proclaimed "Because I have loved him from the day we met, and I love him still, and he loves me, and we always will love each other, and there's _nothing_ that you can do to stop it."

He eyed her curiously then. "He loves you? That's why he's stuck it out this long with a bitch like you? He _loves_ you?"

She nodded, not a trace of doubt in her lined face. Her husband affirmed it meekly, obviously the more timid of the two.

"You're sure about that?"

"With all. His. Heart." She punched out the words to him as if she could strike him down with her emphatic tone.

He smiled wider. This was just going to be too good.

He then proceeded to cut open her husband's chest, right before her very eyes, and carved into his heart. He then stared at it, still faintly beating in between the flaps of skin and sinew, and turned back to her eyes, glazed over in shock.

"I don't see any love in here…" he informed her, as a surgeon might tell a relative that the procedure went wrong.

Without missing a beat, he gleefully exclaimed, "Maybe you can show me!", and with that he tore into the man's chest, clutched the squirming heart in his hand, and tore it out of the chest cavity, veins and all.

He brought it over to where she was bound, and held it up in front of her nose. "Now, show me where the love is, hmm?"

She stared at the bleeding, writhing red muscle in his hand, emotions overloading her to the point that she wasn't sure whether to cry, puke, scream, cuss him out, or faint. Lips trembling, she finally adopted the last option. It certainly made his job of delving into _her_ heart a lot less of a hassle, if a lot less fun.

Holding both hearts in his hands, one in each palm, he weighed them before his eyes, trying to glean some sort of insight as to what she had meant. Hers was quite a bit smaller in size – he wondered what significance _that_ held. Then again, they always said that one's heart was only as large as one's fist; the irony of this notion drew a chuckle from him. For it was true: people's ability to "love" seemed only to be matched by their capacity to _hate_.

In the end of his examination, however, all he found were two empty hearts. Withered away to sagging muscle, drained of all lifeblood, they looked rotten and utterly repulsive. If there had been love when alive, there was certainly none to be found in death.

Now, however, as he lies awake in silken sheets, he gazes absently about the room before him. Shadows grow long in the bright moonlight, painting pictures on the walls with the phantasmal silhouettes of desk, dresser, bathroom door. The doors to the balcony are ajar, letting the chilled November breeze into the stillness of the mansion. It's quite cold tonight, but he can't find the will to get up and close the doors; it's far warmer to stay underneath the blankets.

Rubbing his sleep-deprived eyes, he turns over on his side to stare at the sleeping form of his Bruce, chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. He softly touches a hand to his bedmate's heart, feeling the warm pulse thud against the pressure. The pulse of life. Bruce's heart is strong and steady, never failing him even in his most crucial moments. Never failing either of them.

He brings his head down upon the broad chest, his ear pressed against the beating organ, listening to its lulling, faithful throb within his lover. His _love_r. For this heart has a great capacity to hate, and Bats' fists sometimes speak for him. But that just further exemplifies his overwhelming ability to conjure up something deep within himself, something reserved for his enemy who had never thought it existed.

As he feels strong arms close around him, his last passing thought before drifting to sleep is that maybe – just _maybe_ – the lady's words had had an ounce of truth to them.

* * *

**Aww, poor Joker's confused about basic human emotion...xD I'm glad Bruce is there to show these things to him. If not in so many words.**

**I actually got this idea from a deviant art comic strip by ~pink-snow called "The wish of the JOKer". Of course, that's quite the sappy and ooc version of it, so I went for a bit more subtle approach. BUT THE PICTURE'S STILL SO CUTE I WANNA JUST GIVE HIM A HUG!!! ^.^**

**First person to review gets the grand prize: I will mail you a great big heart full of love! Metaphorically speaking, of course...*shifty eyes***


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